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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Welcome to this week's Make Bake Create Party! Every Wednesday come and link up your favorite projects from the week. This could be any food, recipes, crafts or DIY! Since there are 5 hosts... your link will be seen on 5 blogs at once. SWEET! Meet your hosts:

If you haven’t already we would love for you to follow us on Instagram!

Lately, I've been having fun making ruffles with the scraps leftover from my sewing patterns. I love to make dresses and nightgowns for my girls and find that there's a ton of tissue paper scraps leftover. What a great idea to use them in paper crafting---they've already got that antiquated look! I got this idea from Linda at Simple Things. Another one of those things that I pinned on Pinterest and actually made! Woo Hoo!There were lots of great ideas and yummy food featured last week. Here are a couple of my favorites. If you're featured, make sure to grab a "featured button" for your blog!

Sunday, April 28, 2013

This afternoon there was an Octopalooza going on at the Coller house! A couple of weeks ago, our family received a big brown box in the mail:

All the kids were curious. What could it be?

We opened it up and were thrilled to find a very generous gift from Fisher Price: Five Octonauts play sets for the family to try out and enjoy. Wow! Thanks so much to Fisher Price for providing us with these excellent toys!

Our family is a great test case for toys as we've got nine children from 13 down to newborn! I was interested to see if all the kids would enjoy the toys and was thrilled that they did. We had quite the toy playing party this afternoon! *Please note that while I did allow my children aged 2+ to play with the toys, everything we were sent carries Fisher Price's warning that they can provide a choking hazard to children aged 0-3.

Here Selah (7), Michael (11) and Avalon (4) are enjoying the Octonauts magazine and Octo-Compass. The magazine came with a crew and creature toy set and is full of games, color pages, and facts. I plan to assign each of the kids a couple of pages so they can all have a turn with it. The Octo-Compass speaks over 60 phrases and creature sounds. I know the kids will have a lot of fun making up imaginary missions with their new compass.

Lynzie (13) and Kynthia (2) tried out the Barnacles and Tunip play set. Lynzie was especially excited as she'd read that Tunip changes colors in the water and she wanted to try out the opening clam.

Sure enough, it worked just as promised. Tunip changed from orange to yellow and the clam sunk to the bottom of the tub before opening up and releasing little Tunip. How adorable!

Elisha (10) and Selah (7) paired up to play with the Gup-B & Kwazii play set. Gup-B is an undersea vehicle that will squirt water, as well as chomp it's teeth up and down, when the back fin is pushed down. It also features a color-changing shark and rescue rope.

It's a fun toy to play with both in and out of the water.

Cainan (8) and Liam (3) were really excited to be assigned the big Octopod Playset. Cainan put it together in minutes without any help and then gathered everyone around to teach them what he'd learned about it while assembling.

The Octopod Playset features slides and ropes for rescuing sea creatures, as well as a launch base for Gup-A, another rescue vehicle. There's an OctoAlert button for the top of the playset that is removable and features a belt clip. It makes sounds and phrases to make playing with this set even more fun! The Octopod Playset comes with two character figurines, three sea creatures, four rescue tools and the OctoAlert.

While I was browsing the internet tonight for a little info for this article, I came across the Octonauts website that has lots of awesome games to play! I played Captain Barnacles and the Ice Cave. Whew! That was intense!

We are a homeschooling family---I wonder how much difficulty I'll have getting these kids to focus on their studies tomorrow when they know they've got all these great new toys in the house?Thanks again, so much, to Fisher Price, who sent us these toys for free in exchange for this product review. All opinions are honest and are my own.For more on the Octonauts visit them here:Octonauts Website (fun games!!)Octonauts on FacebookFisher Price on TwitterOctonauts at Toys "R" UsHope In Every Season is on Facebook! If you like what you've read here, please follow me and keep up with the latest posts.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Welcome to this week's Homemaking Party! Hope everyone has had a nice week!My husband has been leading our family in some fun Bible studies that he found in the Family Night Tool Chest series from Focus on the Family. I got smart and grabbed my camera the other night so I could share one with you all!The activity that goes with this study could actually be used to discuss two different themes so I've made a "Pinteresting" image for each in case you're wanting to save this and come back. (Keep reading...you'll find them!)

Jamie started out the lesson by sprinkling the contents of all our baby powder containers, as well as my new container of cornstarch, evenly over a square of sidewalk.

Then he instructed everyone to get to the other side of the powder without tracking any powder onto the clean part of the sidewalk. The grass on both sides was off limits.

After a very long time of contemplation, the kids decided there was no tricky way around this---so they tentatively began stepping out onto the powder.

Results---nope, not possible.

Everyone thought it was funny to see Daddy try too!

They decided to try running through it really fast to see if that would keep the powder from sticking---but no, there was no way around it.

Jamie used the activity to illustrate how there is only one way to God---through Jesus. Just like the only way the kids could get to the other side of the powder was to walk through it, there is only one way for us to reach Father God---through Jesus Christ. He read Exodus 3:1-6 and talked about the definition of holy. He likened the powder to sin and the clean square to holy ground. We couldn't be allowed near God with our dirty sin if it weren't for Jesus' sacrifice for us!

As Jamie was giving the lesson, I kept thinking about how we'd tracked that powder all over the place. Even though the kids all wiped their feet off on a wet towel before coming inside, I could still see white footprints here and there. Kynthia even had it on her face! It made me think about our good and bad moods and how contagious they are.After Jamie was done with the lesson, I told the kids to imagine that powder was a bad attitude and that clean sidewalk was everyone we come into contact with in one day. I told them how our bad attitude can spread and cause others to catch it like a sickness. I explained the importance of keeping our attitudes in check and being careful to spread cheerfulness and kindness instead of grumpiness!Let me know what you think of these devotion ideas---can you use them? If you all are liking them, maybe I'll put up some more!I hope you'll join me for this week's Homemaking Linkup. I love to feature some of the neat posts that are linked up so please make sure and put my button or a text link on your blog so you'll be eligible to be featured!Here are a couple of my favorites from last week's party:

I get a lot of questions about the hows and why of homeschooling, but the big FAQ is always: how do you homeschool with so many kids? Ha! Check out Daja's post from The Provision Room. Such a great article about the philosophy of homeschooling different age groups at once.

Audra's article on How to Drink Enough Water has really blessed me this week! Using this information, I figured out how much I need to be drinking each day and actually removed my wedding ring without the aid of lotion tonight! Woo Hoo!! Thanks, Audra!Thanks to everyone for the great posts!Now for the linkup. Please remember to return the favor by adding my button or a text link to your post. Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Welcome to this week's Make Bake Create Party! Every Wednesday come and link up your favorite projects from the week. This could be any food, recipes, crafts or DIY! Since there are 5 hosts... your link will be seen on 5 blogs at once. SWEET! Meet your hosts:

Our host of the week, Brandi, is sharing these delicious-looking Vanilla Bean Whoopie Pies! Head over to her blog, The Creative Princess, to check them out!There were lots of great ideas and yummy food featured last week. Here are a couple of my favorites. If you're featured, make sure to grab a "featured button" for your blog!

I love finding new ways to put together appropriate outfits. Jacqueline at Deep Roots at Home wrote a great post full of feminine and modest dressing ideas. Thanks for creating this one-stop-shop for inspiration, Jacqueline!

A very awesome gardening idea is this Vertical Flower Garden from A Million Moments. I love this! What a great space saver. So pretty!